Senior Leadership Team travel and subsistence claims: FOI release

Information requested

For senior leadership team members please provide for financial years 24/25 and 23/24 the aggregated value of all excess fare and/or travel and subsistence claims made by senior leadership team members for travel between their their home and your Glasgow and Edinburgh offices, broken down by rail, air, hotel, car hire, taxi, private vehicle mileage claims, other.

Given you publish the names of your senior leadership team already please provide a breakdown of the aggregated amount from question 4 by each senior leadership team member for each financial year. If it’s not possible to name individuals in this context please provide the detail in an anonymised way, for example, staff member 1 etc, staff member 2 etc

Response

I enclose a copy of all of the information you requested in the format you asked for.

In line with the Scottish Government’s Travel and Subsistence Policy, travel costs between an employee’s home to their contractual Scottish Government workplace cannot be claimed or reimbursed as expenses.

Travel and subsistence claims for travel expenses are only permitted where an employee travels to another location for business purposes. In the case of a journey starting from home, the number of miles which can be claimed is the lesser of the actual miles travelled or the notional distance between the permanent workplace and the place visited. The shortest practicable route should be taken. The aggregate value of such claims made by Social Security Directorate senior leadership team was as follows:

Financial Year	Amount	Type
23/24	£21.60	Mileage
24/25	nil	n/a

In addition, civil servants who are transferred from another UK Government Department to the Scottish Government or transferred within the Scottish Government may be eligible to receive a payment in respect of excess fares incurred based on the difference between their previous commute and their new commute for a fixed duration of time. The payment is paid via payroll and is subject to deduction for income tax and national insurance.

The value of excess fare allowance for financial years 24/25 and 23/24 made by Social Security Directorate senior leadership team members for travel between their home and either the Glasgow and Edinburgh offices was as follows:

Financial Year	Excess fares allowances
23/24	£2219.52
24/25	£2219.52

For financial years 23/24 and 24/25, the mileage expense claim was paid to Stephen Kerr and the excess fares allowance was paid to Julie Mclean.

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